A tree, with a stem slightly enlarged from the ground upward, 15°—25° high, 4′—6′ thick, covered with pale blue rind, and surmounted by a broad head of leaves at first erect, then spreading and ultimately pendulous. Wood used for the piles of small wharves and turtle-crawls. The soft tough young leaves are made into hats and baskets.
Distribution. Dry coral ridges and sandy flats from the shores of Bay Biscayne along many of the southern keys to the Marquesas group (var. marquesensis Becc.) Florida; and on the Bahamas (var. macrosperma Becc.).
3. SABAL Adans. Palmetto.
Unarmed trees, with stout columnar stems covered with red-brown rind. Leaves flabellate, tough and coriaceous, divided into many narrow long-pointed parted segments plicately folded at base, often separating on the margins into narrow threads; rachis extending nearly to the middle of the leaves, rounded and broadly winged toward the base on the lower side, thin and acute on the upper side; ligule adnate to the rachis, acute, concave, with thin incurved entire margins; petioles rounded and concave on the lower side, conspicuously ridged on the upper side, acute and entire on the margins, with elongated chestnut-brown shining sheaths of stout fibres. Spadix interfoliar, stalked, decompound, with a flattened stem, short branches, slender densely flowered ultimate branches, and numerous acuminate spathes, the outer persistent and becoming broad and woody. Flowers solitary, perfect; calyx tabular, unequally lobed, the lobes slightly imbricated in the bud; corolla deeply lobed, with narrow ovate-oblong concave acute lobes valvate at the apex in the bud; stamens 6, those opposite the corolla lobes rather longer than the others, with subulate filaments united below into a shallow cup adnate to the tube of the corolla, and ovoid anthers, their cells free and spreading at the base; ovary of 3 carpels, 3-lobed, 3-celled, gradually narrowed into an elongated 3-lobed style truncate and stigmatic at the apex; ovule basilar, erect. Fruit a small black 1 or 2 or 3-lobed short-stemmed berry with thin sweet dry flesh. Seed depressed-globose, marked on the side by the prominent micropyle, with a shallow pit near the minute basal hilum, a thin seed-coat, and a ventral raphe; embryo minute, dorsal, in horny uniform albumen penetrated by a hard shallow basal cavity filled by the thickening of the seed-coat.
Sabal belongs to the New World, and is distributed from the Bermuda Islands and the South Atlantic and Gulf states of North America through the West Indies to Venezuela and Mexico.
Of the eight species now recognized four inhabit the United States; of these two are small stemless plants.
The generic name is of uncertain origin.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES.
Spadix short; fruit subglobose, 1-celled; seed-coat light chestnut color.1. [S. Palmetto] (C). Spadix elongated; fruit often 2 or 3-lobed, with 2 or 3 seeds; seed-coat dark chestnut-brown.2. [S. texana] (E).